Impact is a buzz word. Maybe. Maybe not. Take what you want from it, but you can’t ignore it.

For me, impact is being able to do work I truly believe is making a meaningful difference. It aligns with my personal values and I am having fun while at it.

Sharing a few ways that worked for me to find that kinda work.

🌶 Do the work no one is willing to do.

All teams have boring and grunt work. No team is doing work which is all impactful and worth a stunning portfolio piece. Some examples,

- Colour, font or component audit across the app
- Helping build or improve UX for internal tools
- Organising, cleaning, documenting design files
- Creating assets for recruiting

Look around, and you will find a pile of tasks that is not so shiny but important, and missing a clear owner.

🌶 Help build processes and rituals.

Good and thing about processes and rituals are they always need to keep evolving — to meet team’s needs, size, or just to match the times we are living in. Some examples,

- How is your product design collaborating with creating team
- How often/early is your engineering team getting visibility into designs
- How/If is your team is maintaining an up to date version of current app screens
- How/If is your team is maintaining an up to date version of current app screens
- How is design impact being communicated to leadership team/company-wide

All of these are crucial impactful communication design problems and can be solved by designers with processes.

🌶 Know the product, its people and the history.

I learned this seriously last year and I wish I did it sooner.

It’s easy to grasp the superficial understanding of the product you are working on, most companies cover it in the onboarding week.

Few people in company truly understand the entire product ecosystem, its competitors, its challenges and opportunities, and most importantly it’s constraints.

Having a deep understanding of the product helps you back yourself up, and increase trust of stakeholders in you. With trust comes the privilege of influencing product, people, and processes.

🌶 Keep up with auto-layout.

lol. There are a few our there complaining or plain running away from advanced features like auto layout or smart animate.

I am not supporting the hustle culture or asking you to keep up with #designtwitter.

Personally spending a few hours every week on just keeping up with Figma updates, recreating a slick UI animation, or even just coming on here and writing a blog has made me feel more self confident.

And that’s all there is to it — to enjoy a thing you need to feel you are good at it. When you are good at something, and also enjoy doing it, good people will gravitate towards you.